In the Pathfinder Society I’d like to create a Fighter (using Pathbuilder 2E) that’s good at grappling creatures. But there seems to be so many ways of doing this.
It seems like taking Monk/Wrestler as a L2 Archetype Dedication would be advantageous, but since I’ve never played a pure Fighter I’m not sure if their feats would accomplish the same thing without the overhead. (It’s PFS so no Free Archetype.)
I want a character that does good to great, consistent damage (hence Fighter as base class), with the ability to pin down a tough opponent to make them flat-footed, so others can land hits easier.
I’m playing an Animal Instinct (Snake in my case, Deer is probably better) Barbarian with Wrestler (Free Archetype but honestly if PFS you can just archetype into Wrestler as normal) for my grappler. It works pretty well, but yeah Monk is probably better if you really want to focus on maneuvers like grappling. Barbarian will get you higher damage than an unarmed Fighter will while Monk I think gets you more defenses and maneuverability (I could be wrong, never actually played a monk).
I’m really on the fence with the Barbarians I’ve seen in PFS, so far. They’re usually the first PC to fall in battle, and when they hit they tend to hit hard, but I’ve not really seen that they hit often enough to make up for constantly having to spends time and resources during combat to stop them from outright dying.
I’ve never played Monk either, but it looks like a great class. My personal issue is that my character concept for my PC is a human fighter, with a great backstory. So now I’m torn between going with the idea that fires up my imagination (which I always advocate players do), or going with the ‘better’ option and basically meta-gaming my PC.
Animal Instinct Barbarians are actually a bit tankier than normal barbarians, especially once you get the Animal Skin feat which basically ends up boosting your AC by 1 when Raging rather than reducing it by 1. They also get damage resistance to piercing and slashing damage, which is the main damage type that many monsters do by default. But yeah I can see what you mean, though I’m the health tank in my Extinction Curse party while our Champion is the AC tank, and AC tanking is usually better overall.
Thanks for sharing your experience and insight!
Funny you should mention HP vs. AC as I watched a very interesting YouTube video on just that dynamic a few months ago, and if I remember correctly (overall) AC is the better option to increase if you have that choice.
A Warhammer+Freehand setup is a pretty good baseline. Prone + Grabbed is a nasty debuff combo, and you can inflict the first condition with Hammer crit spec, and the second from Combat Grab from lv 2 Fighter. Beyond that, you’re kind of free to explore any build paths however you please.
You could grab a spiked gauntlet and pairing rings to make Combat grabs more accurate.
You could invest into some handwraps of mighty blows and go hard into wrestler for the special moves that require unarmed strikes.
You could dip into some spellcasting archetypes for Enlarge so that you can grapple huge creatures.
WOOO!!! Thanks for all of the really great paths to check out.
Honestly, Monk + Wrestler or Monk + Barbarian (giant) would probably make a better grappler overall, and do more damage over time, since the Monk inherently does more damage from unarmed attacks. I know what you mean about the fighter doing better damage, but that’s sort of predicated on playing a fighter as a plain vanilla fighter. Once you’ve sort of focused on grappler, you’re chucking part of the fighter’s advantages out the window.
If you do want to stay with fighter as your main class, my opinion is that wrestler is clearly the better choice, mostly because it’s entirely focused on grappling. Take farmhand background, snagging strike as 1st level class feat, wrestler dedication at 2nd which gives you titan wrestler, then combat grab at 4th. If you make it all the way to 8th, that’s when the really fun feats come online, like whirling throw.
